Because friendship is important. It isn’t easy, and it isn’t shallow, and it isn’t casual. If it’s any or all of those things, then it’s acquaintanceship, at best. It may be warm, it may be cordial, it may, as Scott likes to leer, be ‘friendship with benefits’ (not my friend Scott, Paul’s friend Scott, and if you think you’re heartily sick of hearing me bitch about him gloating over his sex life to me and Paul, you ain’t one tenth as sick as I am of listening to him do it), but it’s not friendship as I understand it.

To be friends with someone, you have to be willing to put up with their shit. And you cannot know if you want to, or are able to, put up with their shit from a distance. You have to get in there and hang out for a while.

And, let’s face it: saying ‘I’m your friend, you can count on me’ from four states away via modem is simply much too easy. A friendship isn’t a marriage, but to me, it’s still a very important and significant relationship, and no one in their right mind thinks a long distance marriage between two people who have never met is remotely valid. To really be married to someone, you have to deal with the bad as well as the good. You have to be there for the morning breath and the shitty hair days. You have to put up with the bitchy moods and the various mannerisms and habits that truly aggravate you. If you don’t know these things about a person, and you don’t know if you can deal with them, you shouldn’t be marrying them, and in my opinion, you cannot with any validity claim to be their friend.

This is why I do not believe in Internet friendships, as such. I believe there are great people you can meet on the Internet and I have met some through this blog and other blogs, and I would hope that if I ever met them in the flesh, we would actually become friends (although I am quite obnoxious and dislikable, so that might well not happen, as well… I can already tell I’d get on Dave Fiore’s last never in about thirty seconds, just for one example). Yet even those of that group willing to tell me their real names, and who did not or would not, upon me saying ‘gee, we only live thirty miles apart, maybe we should get together sometime’, figuratively judo kick me right out their window into the street, I do not regard as ‘friends’, as I define that term. I don’t mean any offense and hope I haven’t given any, but to me, a friend is something more.

So what, precisely, is a friend? A friend is actually a pretty simple thing: he or she is someone who is there for you. Not because they owe you (although they may think they do) but because they care, and most importantly, because it is understood between the two of you that you will be there for them, too.

Karl Wasmuth, a brilliant and wise person I once thought of as a friend and that, to my regret and probably to my loss (and I’m sure to his, although I doubt he thinks so), I’ve since discovered never really was, once said “screw the ‘trusting him with my life’ shit; a friend is someone you trust with your apartment key and your girlfriend and to keep a very private manila envelope for you until you ask for it back and never ever open it’.” And I think he’s right. There are strangers you can trust with your life; there are a lot of decent people who will hold on to the back of your belt if you just have to lean off a high ledge for some reason, simply because it’s the decent thing to do. But only a real friend will look after your apartment, your significant other, or your stash of porn that you don’t want your mother finding when she visits, without messing with any of them unduly.

But I’d put it even more simply: a friend is someone you can trust with your truth. A friend is someone you can say pretty much any damn thing you want to say to (which is not an excuse for being rude or cruel; if you’re friends with someone, you won’t be) and know that even if they don’t understand, they’re not going to throw a monster fit or fire you out of their life like a poisonous reptile. A friend is someone who will tell you the truth when that’s what you need to hear, even if (or especially if) everyone else is b.s.ing you right left and sideways. A friend is someone who, when they say “I will always be there for you” or “if there is anything I can do, at all, call me”, they mean it, and you can depend on them.

Now, “I will always be there for you” is something I’ve heard a few times in my life. “If there is anything I can do, at all, call me”… well, we’ve all heard that one a lot, haven’t we? How many of the people you personally have heard that from do you actually believe mean it? How many of them would pick up the phone if they heard your voice on their answering machine at four in the morning sounding completely fucked over, especially if they’d just gotten home from a bar with a hottie?

There are a handful of people in the world who are not related to me by blood that I feel confident I could call at four or five a.m., if I needed to, and they would do whatever they could to help me, if I needed it. And, come to think of it, it’s a small handful. But I will tell you something about me… there is a much larger list of people I have thought of as my friends who have made it clear they have no use nor need nor desire for me at all in their lives, and I am the sort of person that if any of those people, regardless of how badly they’ve pissed all over me, called me at four a.m. in desperate straits and needed my help, I would give it to them. I am that kind of guy. For a friend, I will pick up the phone. I will be there. I will do whatever I can.

Of course, I have no money, I don’t drive, I own no property, I am incompetent at everything in the world but writing, and I am completely without power or authority or influence in any world, material or spiritual. So it’s easy for me to make the claims above, because I will never be in a position to have to deliver on any of that... and who knows, maybe if I won the Lotto, I suddenly wouldn’t be such a good (potential) friend any more.

However, there are things I hold on to, like the fact that once, sometime in the early 1980s, a friend of mine’s mother called me and told me that my friend was having a truly bad reaction to some new flu medication and she was terribly worried for him. Since she was in Florida, and this was happening in Syracuse NY, she couldn’t do anything, but she wondered (this woman, mind you, had never met me and I still don’t know how she knew of me or got my number) if I would mind getting dressed (this call came at around midnight) and walking over to my friend’s apartment and hanging out with him just to keep an eye on him.

Now, my friend… call him Walter, although that’s not his name… is an irascible sort, even more private than I am, and I knew that he would normally not welcome anyone knocking on his door at 1 a.m, and he would be especially surly if he were in the throes of some horrible toxic response to medication. But his mom had asked me and she’d said it sounded really bad to her on the phone, so up I got, and dressed I became, and over the darkling tarmac I trudged, and when Walter answered the door looking like death warmed over and gave me something that would have been a glare if he hadn’t clearly been half dead, and croaked to me that he felt terrible and I couldn’t come in (after I’d beaten on his door for about three minutes straight), I made up on the spot (I’m a gifted liar when I need to be) some horseshit story about having just had a fight with my ex girlfriend Laurie (Laurie Boris, very nice woman I had profound feelings for for years after she broke up with me and whom I was always getting into funks over back then) and really needing to talk to someone. So Walter invited me in, and I watched him wheeze and writhe and sweat and groan for the next four hours, until finally the dose he’d taken wore off. And he thought he was doing ME a favor, and I have never told Walter that, either.

Anyway. To me, a friend is someone who is there for you, and that you are there for, no matter what, and how the hell can someone you have never met be that? How the hell can someone who has never sat in a room with you, talked about religion and politics with you, eaten pizza with you, watched HOWARD THE DUCK or the musical episode of BUFFY with you, who has never showed up at the emergency room so you wouldn’t have to sit there in a plastic chair bleeding by yourself, or come over and dragged your ass out of your apartment to a bad movie when they knew you were in a pissy mood, or even for God’s sake helped you move, be your friend?

I am a good friend. There are many many people in the world who once knew that, and who seem to have forgotten it, or who don’t care, or who simply have no use for a good friend who can’t do anything for their career at the moment, or who would rather wallow in their own misery than let a good friend like me in, and I think those people are fools.

LOL. And I crack me up, because I’ve just realized that my ‘ a friend is someone who is there for you’ is, for all its heavy, solemn pompousness… and I’m really good at that, aren’t I?… nothing but a close paraphrase of the chorus to the Friends theme song. Heh. So I guess that’s what I’ll title this little exercise in self promotion, since I may as well pull it and make it a separate entry.

BACK TO GEEKLAND

Before I got all maudlin and self pitying, I was talking about real world stuff. Leaving behind Egregious Email Violators (because, honest to god, what’s the use; if sending me email just isn’t a priority for someone, then that’s how it’s going to be), I can note that Paul and I did indeed go grocery shopping at Wal-mart at around 4 a.m. Wednesday morning, for the good and simple reason that Paul was feeling restless and there is nowhere else to go and nothing else to do at 4 a.m. in Zephyrhills besides Wal-mart. And other than the employees and a crazy lady who talked incessantly to herself in low, muttering phrases as she pushed a shopping cart that became steadily stacked higher and higher with various kinds of pet food all over the store (I don’t think she was on a limited income, I suspect she must have thousands of cats and/or dogs), we had the store all to ourselves, too, which was odd but kind of enjoyable (although they had the far ends of each grocery aisle blocked off to facilitate restocking, which made navigation a challenge). In addition to groceries (Paul eats ALL THE TIME, which is, I suppose, only to be expected since he is pretty much stoned all the time he’s at home), Paul also desperately wanted to blow some money on some kind of toy (I’m sure you all know that feeling) so he picked up a cheap Platinum Edition of some fighting game called Dead Or Alive 3, and we’ve been playing that. It’s got nice graphics and is kind of fun, in an absent minded kind of way... it's a great deal like Soul-Calibre II, but without a lot of the bells and whistles.

Oh, yeah, I finally watched Save The Last Dance, which there is simply no reason to bother with, except the pleasure of watching Julia Stiles, who is only an okay actress (she over emotes rather noticeably in places) but who is awfully easy on the eyes.

Beyond that, I’ll just note I was rereading my novel Endgame a few days ago and was astonished by how badly written it was. Maybe all my novels are like that. Or maybe I was just cranky. I’m sure we all know that that happens.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT…

Everyone but Dave Fiore is excused from reading the following, much less commenting on it.

Dave has reprinted his Research Proposal, and in it, he says this:

My experiences with academic writing are more than 20 years behind me, and god knows I’ve been beaten up on the Internet for not writing any of my many many geek-oriented articles to ‘academic standards’, largely because I not only don’t give a shit about academic standards, but I’m not even sure what they are any more. So I am not at all sure if, within the realm of academe, one is supposed to make such bold, unqualified statements without a hint of corroboration or qualification to them. Yet whether one is supposed to or not, Dave has, and, well, Dave is so vastly oversimplifying the case that I just have to take lengthy and unnecessary issue with him here. And after that, just for fun, I thought I’d examine some DC heroes, too, in light of his rather fulsomely phrased ‘sudden pseudo-scientific bursts’, to see how valid his statement might be over there, if at all.

First, I should note that I talked about this some in Dave’s comment threads, and he admitted, in his response there, that I was right and he was basically talking through his hat. Nonetheless, the statement is still there and Dave is, presumably, still hoping to get a grant based on it, so, as I took issue with Bradford Wright when he ringingly declared (among many many other inaccurate claims) that a Charleton page clearly credited at the bottom had been done by an unknown writer and artist, and that Hawkman and Hawkwoman were, in their secret identities, police officers, so too will I now take issue with Dave, pointless though it is.

Dave is correct about many of Marvel’s primary superhero characters. The Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, as well as Daredevil and the X-Men, were all more or less brought into being in ‘a sudden pseudo-scientific burst’, as was, now that I think of it, the Hulk (although I only rarely can be convinced that the Hulk is in any way a ‘superhero’, and then I usually get over it pretty fast). However, Dave seems to be saying here (as we can see in his note about Dr. Strange) that all of Marvel’s characters except Dr. Strange basically transcended humanity due to a sudden and unexpected scientific accident or occurrence that they themselves did not plan, thus giving them, in effect, unearned power… a level of grace (to use Dave-like religious terms) simply granted them on high, that they did nothing to deserve or merit.

Such origins are common in superhero comics or, as I call them in other articles, ‘metauniverses’. Often times, it’s as if the Almightly had granted some mortal great powers on spec… he fronts them the superhumanity, and they pay for it by serving the greater good of humanity afterward. (Alas, the vast majority of folk empowered, via ‘pseudo-scientific burst’ or other agency, choose to rob banks and beat up weaker folk and generally act out, but it’s just as well, or the FF and the Avengers wouldn’t have anyone to fight.)

But Dave claims that other than in the case of Dr. Strange, this is ALWAYS so with EVERY Marvel hero, and that’s just wrong.

While Dr. Strange is an excellent example of a ‘superhuman’ who has earned that status through arduous study and training (Strange’s ‘super powers’ consisting only of his learned capacity to perform complex magical spells and to use powerful magical items entrusted to him by his mentor so he can guard humanity from supernatural perils), there are other examples in the Marvel Silver Age. Two prominent ones are both founding members of the Avengers… Hank Pym (Ant-Man/Giant-Man/Goliath/Yellowjacket/Dr. Pym), and Tony Stark (Iron Man).

While both Pym and Stark drawn their superhuman powers from artificial devices (Pym has a size changing serum he uses to grow and shrink, and special circuitry he can use to communicate with and control various forms of insect life; Stark has an extremely advanced suit of powered battle armor tricked out with every offensive and defensive gimmick imaginable, including devices granting him the basic superhuman powers of flight, focused energy attacks, invulnerability, and superhuman strength), it’s worthwhile to note that neither of them are simply given those devices by providence, or in a ‘pseudo-scientific burst’. Both make use of their own inventions, products of long years of labor and their own scientific genius, in their heroic guises. This differentiates them enormously from someone like Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, who all gained super powers essentially from exposure to radiation, or the X-Men, who are born with theirs because their parents were exposed to radiation. It even differentiates such characters, who have ‘earned their wings’, from characters like Captain America, who while he was not quite gifted with his super powers out of the blue, still didn’t exactly create his superhuman status on his own (he volunteered for a super soldier experiment in the full knowledge it might well kill him, so you could say his valor ‘earned’ him his super powers, but he certainly wasn’t capable of designing the process that gave him his superhumanity).

How this would impact Dave’s thesis I have no idea, because I’m not sure what point he’s trying to make (although I know it has something to do with his comparison of modern day superhero mythology to classical Christian religious mythology and tautology regarding grace and sainthood and other intangibles). However, the statement that all Marvel superheroes except for Dr. Strange gained their abilities in some ‘pseudo-scientific burst’ is demonstrably false to fact (even leaving aside Thor, who originally did get his abilities in a classic ‘out of nowhere’ divinely granted grace manner, but whose origins are supernatural, not scientific… and anyway, we later found out Don Blake didn’t actually get the powers of Thor from a magical stick, he really was Thor all along, he just didn’t know it).

Just for shits and giggles, as Gary Lindstrom was once wont to say, let’s look at how well this statement would hold up at the Silver Age DC Universe.

Looking simply at the ‘big gun’ characters is fairly easy, since DC was kind enough to enroll all of them in their classic Justice League line up, thus telling us who we have to take seriously and who we can just ignore. Thus, what we’re looking at now are the following characters: Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Aquaman, the Martian Manhunter, the Atom, Hawkman, and Wonder Woman. (Several of them aren’t charter members, but they’re the most important Silver Age DC heroes.)

Dave’s thesis holds up about as well here as it does at the Marvel Universe. Superman, certainly, gains his powers in a ‘pseudo-scientific burst’, if an odd one… he is, more or less, born with superpowers, but he wouldn’t have been if he’d grown up on his native (alien) world. It is only the rays of Earth’s yellow sun and Earth’s lesser gravitation (that last was an element constantly mentioned in the Silver Age that has since been jettisoned, since it makes little sense, because Superman kept his superstrength even while exploring gas giants, black holes, and solar coronae, which I know I’ve spelled wrong but damned if I can figure out how it should be spelled; therefore, Earth’s gravitation couldn’t have had much to do with it) that endows him with his superhumanity (as it would endow any Kryptonian come to Earth with them, and, for that matter, any Daxamite, as well).

Aquaman, like Marvel’s similar Sub-Mariner, gets his powers because he is a human/merfolk hybrid. I suppose that’s genetic, so pseudo-science works there, as well. Green Lantern is handed his powers by a dying alien. Hawkman has no real super powers but makes use of advanced alien technology to simulate some (flight, and the ability to talk to birds, and, when he needs to use it, the ability to gain any knowledge in the universe, which he never EVER exploits intelligently). However, since Hawkman was never defined as having invented the technology he uses (we’re never even given any indication that Hawkman or Hawkgirl have the slightest idea how their wings or the Absorbascon work), he’s not exactly someone who has ‘earned’ his powers through hard work or study. So, yeah, ‘pseudo-scientific burst’ will work there, too.

The Martian Manhunter is another alien who gets powers from being on Earth, and yes, if you were a young male Silver Age superhero fan, you’d start hoping to one day find out you’d been born on a distant planet yourself, trust me. Wonder Woman is either a homunculus or a golem, depending on how you want to look at her (and how Jewish you like your mythology), so there’s no pseudo-science there, but neither did she earn her powers; she is, in fact, almost literally a case of divine grace given more or less mortal flesh. (Wonder Woman kinda sorta earned her status AS Wonder Woman by winning this all Amazon Olympic games held specifically to determine who would accompany Steve Trevor back to Man’s World as a representative of the Amazons, and, presumably, be the first Amazon in millenia to experience heterosexual intimacy. However, it goes without saying that the games weren’t exactly fair; you can’t expect merely human chickiepoos, regardless of their sexual orientation, to successfully compete in athletic contests with a gods-blessed animated statue possessing superhuman strength, speed, and stamina.)

The Flash definitely qualifies for the ‘pseudo-scientific burst’; in fact, it was a pseudo-scientific burst of lightning hitting a big rack of chemicals and spilling them all over Barry Allen that gave him his super speed and various super speed related powers.

So most of DC’s major Silver Age characters would certainly fall within Dave’s statement. However, we’re left with three who don’t… Batman, Green Arrow, and the Atom.

Batman and Green Arrow are basically non-super powered superheroes. They run with the big boys (and big girls) basically on sheer raw willpower (although sheer raw willpower is actually Green Lantern’s thing). Batman is, in many ways, the antithesis of Superman and the founder of an entirely separate superheroic tradition (although, in another sense, Batman is simply a classic pulp hero with a cape and cowl; Doc Savage with a spookier motif). Where Superman is simply superhuman in all ways because, well, he just IS, Batman attained his status among the mythical modern day demigods through fanatical lifelong application of rigorous study, training, and plain goddam hard work. (It’s safe to assume that Bruce Wayne also had an enormous amount of natural talent at a great many things… deductive thinking, the martial arts, criminology, most forms of practical science and forensics… but still, it was the twenty years or so of non-stop work that honed all that to the fine edge that is represented in the Darknight Detective.)

Green Arrow could go either way. One could argue he must have worked hard to learn his archery skills, but as with most superhero archers, his origin also clearly demonstrates that he has a brilliant, all but unparalleled natural talent for the bow and arrow, as well. Since like all Silver Age super-archers, he uses advanced scientific gimmicks in his arrows to even the odds (and make the character more fun), one could argue that pseudo-scientific bursts can apply here… but I don’t think so. Ultimately, Green Arrow, as well as his doppelganger at Marvel, Hawkeye the Archer, are characters dependent on their mastery of a difficult martial skill.

The Atom is possibly the strangest character imaginable, when examined in the light of Dave’s thesis. Yes, he gets his power to alter his size and weight from a technological device he designs and builds himself… but he would not have been able to do it if divine providence hadn’t chucked a meteorite made out of… something… (I don’t what it was but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t ‘white dwarf material’ as the Atom claims; not only couldn’t Ray Palmer… or, for that matter, Superman himself… have lifted a chunk of white dwarf material as big as the one we see him carrying in the Atom’s origin story, or tossed it into the trunk of his car without, you know, crushing said car into scrap metal, but a chunk of actual white dwarf material that massive would most likely have wrecked Earth’s orbital path and shattered the core of the planet had it actually impacted Earth’s surface) … completely unavailable on Earth at him in the first place.

This makes the Atom a rather bizarre mixture. It would seem God chose Ray Palmer (the Atom’s real name) rather carefully. Instead of simply granting some nice fellow the ability to ‘concentrate his mass down to tiny size through the application of a single overwhelmingly powerful thought’ (the explanation given for the Doll Man’s ability to change size), God picked out a scientist with enough brains to actually be able to use a chunk of… something… to build himself a size and weight control belt, which he would then use to fight crime (and annoy his girlfriend, but God probably didn’t plan that).

Aaaand… that was fun to write, if essentially pointless. And it’s now five a.m., rather than four a.m., so let me post this and then try to get some sleep…

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.